All posts tagged: Self

Choice and Consequence Part 4: Benevolence

January 29, 2022
by Michael
comments 16
Course Ideas / Reflections

Part 3 of the series is here. Last time I wrote about the distinction between unity and separation—the two possible cornerstones of our individual thought systems. Each of these serves as the organizing factor for all that follows in our perceptual navigation of experience. In describing the transition from the state of perfect communication within the primordial state of being—which is unity—to the condition of separation, I noted that “the experience of being separate was granted, […]

On the Great Marriage

June 5, 2016
by Michael
comments 47
Christ / Course Ideas / Reflections

The description I love best is that each of us is an intersection of matter and spirit, the above and below, the eternal and the present, of knowledge and mystery.  I am tired of materialism—so very tired of its laborious absurdities, the dead ends it tries to pretty-over, the delicate faculties of the human being it would all but silence.  Even so, I would not discard logic or rational thought.  I would simply hold them […]

The Engines of Experience

April 3, 2016
by Michael
comments 36
Course Ideas / Reflections

I believe a lot of interesting things, things I’ve collected along the way.  I have pages and pages of notes.  Scribblings.  Arrows and half-thoughts running up and down the margins.  Ellipses and question marks.  Coffee stains.  My life is a draft copy full of edits.  I’m always circling back– leaping from one passage to another, sifting through my notes, strengthening the narrative, discovering what was and might have been. We are revealed in the living of […]

Breath Incarnate

January 17, 2016
by Michael
comments 68
Reflections

Peace taken up by the flesh has a rhythm to it.  A field of frozen grass and falling snow, mixed with true inhabitants, will ripple with tongues of steam.  Life will move in and out of itself, and possibilities will disperse from their smoky origins, drift into the branches of trees at the field’s edge, and nestle into nooks beneath the boughs. We share a breath that’s always breathing– here and there and all at once– a […]

A Dialogue on the Continuum of Life

October 18, 2015
by Michael
comments 26
Dialogues

This post is based on dialogue rather than monologue, which brings a different approach to things.  Because it is already fairly lengthy, I’ll not offer much by way of introduction.  Hariod and I have had a brief discussion on the topic of reincarnation and whether or not we consider life to be a conscious continuum.  I hope you enjoy.  For those not inclined to read through all of this, at least a haiku: Crispy autumn leaves scurrying […]

No. I Am Not.

October 11, 2015
by Michael
comments 63
Poetry

Obviously I am not a Christian, but Jesus is my companion. More than that, even. We were bound together in darkness, in a moment we both chose without resistance. The ropes encircling us are sacred. We are each other’s atrium and ventricle. We live in the same house. We love the same woman. We lay together on a raft sometimes, continuing our passage across the sea to visit the birth of life. At night, when I’m […]

Seeing Beyond Our Notions of Self and God

July 30, 2015
by Michael
comments 32
Christ / Course Ideas

This is the third and final piece I’ve written in response to the quotation challenge that Ka presented to me back in June.  I have had some fun enjoying a day off today, searching through A Course of Love for some juicy ones.  That is an activity that could quickly get out of hand for me…  The quotes I’ve selected are somewhat in reaction to a series of mouse-clicks yesterday that landed me on a […]

Surrendering to the Creative Self

July 19, 2015
by Michael
comments 26
Book Reviews / Science

In this, the second of three pieces developed in response to Ka’s quotation challenge, I want to explore briefly the ideas and work of Christopher Alexander, an architect, writer and thinker whose work has had a profound impact on me.  The quotes I’ve selected all come from his four volume series entitled The Nature of Order.  I don’t remember exactly how I discovered this work, but I do remember knowing instantly that I desired to […]

Something Stupendous

July 17, 2015
by Michael
comments 29
Poetry

At the center of every human being, something stupendous is happening– something deadpan naked beautiful, a trembling madness, a high outcropping of multiplying swooning cliff diving lovers. I don’t know what it is, but I think it might be related to the fact that the sky is peppered with drums so vast their beats shake galaxies out of the darkness like dust from the Beloved’s rug, that it’s full of light transmissions, secret messages, and the odd comet, […]

What Barn.

July 14, 2015
by Michael
comments 33
Poetry

You will never find water that isn’t in cahoots with all the other water. Even the last drop of a dried-up lake has the idea of the sea inside of it. A buffalo laps it up. Now what… What I mean is that when you’re quiet, dissolving into the sky is a completely natural thing to do. You could pop back out anywhere, coalesce out of nothing, find yourself in an active hygroscopic nebula, and […]